glial

A 54-year-old Japanese man presented with headache and fever the day after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. He became deeply unconscious within a week. Brain MRI showed periventricular linear enhancements and a few spotty lesions in the cerebral white matter. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) testing showed mild pleocytosis. He was treated with intravenous methylprednisolone and plasma exchange. However, the white matter lesions enlarged to involve the brainstem and cerebellum, and long cord spinal lesions appeared. Anti-glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) antibody was positive in the CSF and serum, and he was therefore diagnosed as autoimmune GFAP-astrocytopathy (GFAP-A)...

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Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) refers to two chronic conditions of the digestive tract: ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD), representing a progressive inflammatory process that mainly occurs in the gut, with frequent extra-intestinal manifestations. Even if remission is periodically obtained for some patients, the histological activity and digestive symptoms may continue, maintaining a persistent systemic inflammation that could induce further extra-intestinal complications and contribute to the development of neurodegenerative disease...

Autoimmune encephalitis encompasses a spectrum of neurological disorders characterized by an autoimmune response directed against neurons and glia. Around two-thirds of cases exhibit autoantibodies targeting neuronal or glial antigens in the cerebrospinal fluid and/or serum. The diagnosis is based on specific criteria combining a subacute clinical presentation and complementary test results. However, approximately one-quarter of patients do not present any paraclinical abnormalities, making the diagnosis complex...

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: We aimed to measure cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow rates in the subarachnoid space (SAS) of the optic nerve (ON) by applying non-invasive diffusion-weighted MRI in patients with normal tension glaucoma (NTG) compared to age-matched controls. SUBJECTS/METHODS: In this prospective study, an analysis of diffusion-weighted images of 26 patients with NTG (49ONs) and age-matched volunteers (52ONs) was conducted. Subjects were classified into 4 groups: group I (50-59 y...

Neuroinflammation is a common pathological feature in a number of neurodegenerative diseases, which is mediated primarily by the activated glial cells. Nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-like receptor pyrin domain-containing-3 (NLRP3) inflammasome-associated neuroinflammatory response is mostly considered. To investigate the situation of the NLRP3-related inflammation in prion disease, we assessed the levels of the main components of NLRP3 inflammasome and its downstream biomarkers in the scrapie-infected rodent brain tissues...

The highly specialized nonmyelinating glial cells present at somatic peripheral nerve endings, known collectively as terminal Schwann cells (TSCs), play critical roles in the development, function and repair of their motor and sensory axon terminals and innervating tissue. Over the past decades, research efforts across various vertebrate species have revealed that while TSCs are a diverse group of cells, they share a number of features among them. In this review, we summarize the state-of-knowledge about each TSC type and explore the opportunities that TSCs provide to treat conditions that afflict peripheral axon terminals...

Obesity is a major modifiable risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD), characterized by progressive atrophy of the cerebral cortex. The neurobiology of obesity contributions to AD is poorly understood. Here we show with in vivo MRI that diet-induced obesity decreases cortical volume in mice, and that higher body adiposity associates with lower cortical volume in humans. Single-nuclei transcriptomics of the mouse cortex reveals that dietary obesity promotes an array of neuron-adverse transcriptional dysregulations, which are mediated by an interplay of excitatory neurons and glial cells, and which involve microglial activation and lowered neuronal capacity for neuritogenesis and maintenance of membrane potential...

The vagus nerve, a pivotal link within the gut-brain axis, plays a critical role in maintaining homeostasis and mediating communication between the gastrointestinal tract and the brain. It has been reported that gastrointestinal infection by Salmonella typhimurium (S. typhimurium) triggers gut inflammation and manifests as anxiety-like behaviors, yet the mechanistic involvement of the vagus nerve remains to be elucidated. In this study, we demonstrated that unilateral cervical vagotomy markedly attenuated anxiety-like behaviors induced by S...

Exposure to mercury and its organic form methylmercury (MeHg), is of great concern for the developing nervous system. Despite available literature on MeHg neurotoxicity, there is still uncertainty about its mechanisms of action and the doses that trigger developmental effects. Our study combines two alternative methodologies, the human neural stem cells (NSC) and the zebrafish (ZF) embryo, to address the neurotoxic effects of early exposure to nanomolar concentrations of MeHg. Our results show linear or nonmonotonic (hormetic) responses depending on studied parameters...

Remodeling retinal Müller glial fate, including gliosis inhibition and pro-reprogramming, represents a crucial avenue for treating degenerative retinal diseases. Stem cell transplantation exerts effects on modulating retinal Müller glial fate. However, the optimized stem cell products and the underlying therapeutic mechanisms need to be investigated. In the present study, we found that retinal progenitor cells from human embryonic stem cell-derived retinal organoids (hERO-RPCs) transferred extracellular vehicles (EVs) into Müller cells following subretinal transplantation into RCS rats...

The olfactory bulb is involved early in the pathophysiology of Parkinson's disease (PD), which is consistent with the early onset of olfactory dysfunction. Identifying the molecular mechanisms through which PD affects the olfactory bulb could lead to a better understanding of the pathophysiology and etiology of olfactory dysfunction in PD. We specifically aimed to assess gene expression changes, affected pathways and co-expression network by whole transcriptomic profiling of the olfactory bulb in subjects with clinicopathologically defined PD...

BACKGROUND: Brain tumours are known to have a high mortality and morbidity rate due to their localised and frequent invasive growth. The concept that glioma resistance could originate from the dissimilarity in the vulnerability of clonogenic glial stem cells to chemotherapeutic drugs and radiation has driven the scientific community to reexamine the comprehension of glioma growth and strategies that target these cells or modify their stemness. METHODS: Based on the enrichment scores of 12 stemness signatures, we identified glioma subtypes in both tumour bulks and single cells by clustering analysis...

Traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI) is one of the catastrophic events in the nervous system that leads to the loss of sensory and motor function of the spinal cord at the site of injury. Considering that several factors such as apoptosis, inflammation, and oxidative stress play a role in the spread of damage caused by trauma, therefore, the treatment should also be based on multifactorial approaches. Currently, we investigated the effects of human menstrual blood stem cells (MenSCs)-derived exosomes in combination with hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) in the recovery of TSCI in rats...

The aim of this study was to develop an alternative treatment method for neurodegenerative diseases with dopaminergic neuron loss such as Parkinson's disease by differentiating cells obtained from human olfactory mucosa-derived neural stem cells (hOM-NSCs) with neurotrophic agents in vitro. hOM-NSCs were isolated and subjected to immunophenotypic and MTT analyses. These hOM-NSCs were then cultured in a 3D environment to form neurospheres. The neurospheres were subjected to immunophenotypic analysis and neuronal differentiation assays...

Numerous neurological disorders share a fatal pathologic process known as glutamate excitotoxicity. Among which, ischemic stroke is the major cause of mortality and disability worldwide. For a long time, the main idea of developing anti-excitotoxic neuroprotective agents was to block glutamate receptors. Despite this, there has been little successful clinical translation to date. After decades of "neuron-centered" views, a growing number of studies have recently revealed the importance of non-neuronal cells...

PURPOSE: Complete surgical resection is still the mainstay in the treatment of central nervous system low-grade tumors, eventually resulting curative. The complete surgical removal of these lesions, however, may be difficult in some cases because of their infiltrative nature. Intraoperative adjuncts may be a game changer. Sodium fluorescein (SF) is among the ideal candidates as intraoperative tools to favor the actual recognition of the tumor extension, since it accumulates in areas of altered blood-brain barrier, a typical characteristic of pediatric gliomas, and has a low rate of adverse events...

The three isoforms of glycogen phosphorylase - PYGM, PYGB, and PYGL - are expressed in glial cells. Unlike PYGB and PYGL, PYGM is the only isoform regulated by Rac1. This specific regulation may confer a differential functional role compared with the other glycogen phosphorylases-PYGB and PYGL. The involvement of muscle glycogen phosphorylase in glial cells and its association with post-translational modifications (PTMs) of proteins through O-glycosylation is indeed a fascinating and emerging area of research...

Nonclinical studies of test articles (TAs) in nonhuman primates are often designed to assess both biodistribution and toxicity. For this purpose, studies commonly use intravenous perfusion of ice-cold (2°C-8°C) saline to facilitate measurements of TA-associated nucleic acids and proteins, after which tissues undergo later fixation by immersion for histological processing and microscopic evaluation. Intriguingly, minimal apoptosis/single cell necrosis (A/SCN) of randomly distributed neural cells is evident in the cerebral cortex and less often the hippocampus in animals from all groups, including vehicle-treated controls...

Mutations in Drosophila Swiss Cheese (SWS) gene or its vertebrate orthologue Neuropathy Target Esterase (NTE) lead to progressive neuronal degeneration in flies and humans. Despite its enzymatic function as a phospholipase is well-established, the molecular mechanism responsible for maintaining nervous system integrity remains unclear. In this study, we found that NTE/SWS is present in surface glia that forms the blood-brain-barrier (BBB) and that NTE/SWS is important to maintain its structure and permeability...